Still Time for U.S. to Save Bosnia Without Intervention

By Sen. Orrin G. Hatch

The horror of the human suffering in Bosnia is matched only by the horror of the increasing complicity of Europe in Serbia's genocidal aggression in Bosnia. Instead of following Europe's lead, the United States must compel Europe to adopt President Clinton's 1993 proposals to lift the U.N.-imposed arms embargo.

During the last two months, the spectacle of Western disarray in the face of the total defiance of Serbia's leaders calls into question our ability to manage European affairs. During the NATO summit, NATO leaders stuck their heads in the sand while Serbia shoved more shells into artillery guns pounding Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities.

NATO's purported goal at the summit was to define its post-Cold War role. But the future of the alliance will be defined not by artful communiqués. Instead, its relevance will be determined by whether its policies and actions address the leading European security issues in this new era.

Sleepwalking Through History

Front and center among those issues is Bosnia. In that conflict, NATO has been sleepwalking its way through history. If its policies remain unchanged, the United States and its allies not only will lose credibility as security partners for the still vulnerable states of the former Soviet bloc but also will embolden aggressors in Europe and elsewhere.

Last December, President Clinton rightly distanced the United States from the European proposals to lift the sanctions against Serbia if Bosnian Serbs put another meaningless signature on an unenforceable peace agreement. It was bad enough that the European Community has persistently opposed stronger actions in Bosnia. Its gambit to throw away the sanctions—our only real leverage against Serbia—was the last straw. Compared to Europe's mediators, Neville Chamberlain is starting to look good.

Western leaders have declared that Serbian ethnic cleansing is unacceptable and that sending Western ground forces to impose peace is also unacceptable. To pre vent genocide without sending combat troops, the indispensable first step is the lifting of the U.N. arms embargo that has denied the victims of Serbian aggression the weapons with which to defend themselves.

President Clinton reached that conclusion last spring, but backed down against European objections. With the rejection by Serbian leaders of any suggested compromise, the White House ought to seize the moment presented by Europe's failure to resurrect its proposals. By seeking to raise Bosnia at the NATO summit, the Europeans themselves appear to concede that their approach has reached a dead end.

To be sure, the setting is more difficult now. The Croatian and Muslim communities, which represent 65 percent of the prewar population, have been forced into a third of Bosnia's pre-war territory, resulting in sometimes brutal conflicts between the two former allies. Extremists in the Croatian and Muslim camps have both gained strength as a result of the cycle of escalating violence.

But if the arms embargo were partially lifted, the United States could use the leverage of arms supplies to broker a deal between the Croatians and Muslims. Initial supplies should be made contingent on the removal of extremists and fundamentalists from positions of power in each group and the demobilization of units implicated in atrocities. Continuing arms supplies should then be linked to sustained military and political cooperation and respect for human rights.

For almost two years, the Serbians have used threats to attack U.N. peacekeepers to blackmail the West. But that specter is exaggerated. Access by land would already be possible to most Croatian and Muslim areas if these two groups restore their alliance. With adequate arms, Croatian and Muslim forces could open up corridors to many besieged cities and enclaves, while others could receive supplies by air drops and by smuggling through Serbian-held areas.

The West has made a fatal mistake in overestimating the capabilities of the Serbian forces in Bosnia. Serbian successes so far are attributable not to the size or strength of their forces but to the weakness of their opponents, who have greater numbers but who have been deprived of needed defensive weapons. In Slovenia and Croatia, Serbian aggression ground to a halt when its adversaries demonstrated the will and means to resist. The same would be true in Bosnia.

Those who decry any involvement in Bosnia overlook one fact: Through the arms embargo, the West is already intervening in the war—but on the wrong side. Serbia and its clients in Bosnia inherited the arms industry of the former Yugoslavia, a major exporter of equipment and ammunition, and suffer no detriment from the arms embargo. As President Clinton recognized last spring, simple justice requires that the United Nations allow Bosnia the means to defend itself.

The crisis in Bosnia will not disappear. Just as the United States supported the Afghan resistance for more than 10 years until Moscow withdrew its occupation armies, the West can achieve its objectives in Bosnia without the loss of a single American or European life. It may be too late to prevent massive deaths among Muslim and Croatian civilians in Bosnia this winter. But if we act now, there's still time to turn the tide of war in the spring and avoid their annihilation.